12" No. #132 | Mortar | 1890

Fort Desoto Park, FL

29,000 lbs. of Mortar had a way of saying 'don't misbehave' to shipping vessels back at the turn of the century...

These mortars controlled the main shipping lane into Tampa bay. A ship entering the bay had to pass between Fort Dade, on Egmont Key, and Fort De Soto. For that entire time, they were directly under the guns of the batteries on either side of them.

Fort De Soto has the only four 12-inch seacoast rifled mortars (model 1890 mounted on 1896 carriages) in the continental United States.

Re: 12" No. #132 | Mortar | 1890

[ Side View ]

These mortars are much larger than the images give them credit - I'm hunting for an ok pic that helps provide some scale - they're just short of 12 feet from the muzzle to the breach and could launch an 800lb. projectile almost 7 miles...each mortar had a 12 man crew to manage it.

(Converted to mono in Silver FX, increased structure, bleached in Color FX Pro, retouched in Aperture to remove foliage and other non-essential distractions)

Re: 12" No. #132 | Mortar | 1890

This was taken inside the fort, looking out. Pretty dark on our side of the action, manipulated the contrast to help bring out details, stylized in Silver EFX and a bit in Aperture, wrenched into a better perspective with GIMP.